Boost your maths

You’ll need to be good at maths, both for the UKCAT and your career in medicine.

If you’re not studying the subject at A Level, you’ll need to make sure you know enough for the Quantitative Reasoning element of the UKCAT. Even if you are, you may want to take a break from calculus to increase your speed at basic arithmetic.

One way is to find online GCSE Maths exercises and exams, e.g. BBC Bitesize. Practising these will refresh your memory, preventing nasty surprises and forgotten techniques in the exam. It’ll also make you faster at extracting relevant data from test questions.

Consider boosting your mental arithmetic. You’ve got 24 minutes to answer 36 questions, so there’s potential to save seconds at every stage. Any sum you can do quickly in your head rather than long-hand or with the calculator will save you precious seconds to use on other questions.

If mental arithmetic isn’t your thing, you have the on-screen calculator. Try to practise with the keyboard shortcuts (and a keyboard with a numpad) to save time typing in the test.

Finally, don’t forget you have the laminated paper to write down intermediary results and any other calculations you want to track.